"Microsoft will move the graphics for its next version of Windows outside of the operating system's kernel to improve reliability, the software giant has told Techworld. Vista's graphics subsystem, codenamed Avalon and formally known as the Windows Presentation Foundation, will be pulled out the kernel because many lock-ups are the result of the GUI freezing, Microsoft infrastructure architect Giovanni Marchetti told us exclusively yesterday."

This is not about drivers! Even in Xorg there are graphic drivers running in kernel mode (nvidia-module anyone?). I don't thing that there won't be any kernel driver in vista, at least a very low level one, in the end it is their hardware and they (nvidia/ati) are not going to tell anybody how it works.

What they are doing is to rip the GDI from kernel, this can be best compared to running GTK+ or Qt. Now that is a good idea:)